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Thursday, July 7, 2011

Tintin: Sinister Racist Propaganda

As an explorer, crime fighter and all-around hero, comic-strip icon Tintin has been an inspiration for generations. But his status as a paragon of wholesome adventure is under threat, thanks to a court bid to ban one of his books, Tintin in the Congo, for its racist portrayal of Africans.

The trial, which will begin on Wednesday in Brussels, the city where Tintin's creator, Hergé, lived, is reviving memories of an era that Belgium would rather forget: its brutal colonial empire in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The case was lodged by a Brussels-based Congolese former accountant, Bienvenu Mbutu Mondondo, 42, who says the book — first published in 1930 — is racist, colonial propaganda. "It shows the Africans as childish imbeciles," he tells TIME. "It suggests blacks have not evolved." Indeed, to today's reader, many of the scenes range from politically incorrect to hideously offensive, including one in which a black woman bows before Tintin exclaiming, "White man very great. White mister is big juju man!"

A white man's fantasy of Congo women worshiping at their white feet.

Congolese women reality: Shackled together, enslaved in their own homeland, held as hostages until their men returned with enough rubber to make King Leopold and the Belgium people rich beyond their wildest dreams. While impoverishing and enslaving the native people.

Hergé, who had never visited Congo, was just 23 when he wrote the book, which he was persuaded to do as part of a government-led initiative to encourage Belgians to take up commissions in Congo. But Mbutu Mondondo says it served — and still serves — to prop up a sanitized account of Belgium's colonialism. "It twists history to suggest that everything was happy and fun," he says. "In reality, it was a tragic, hurtful time."

Belgian Congo was one of the most bloody and cruel colonial regimes in Africa. The original inspiration for Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, it was claimed for King Leopold II in 1885 by the explorer Henry Morton Stanley.

A very gay Stanley Morgan poses his enslaved African boy trophy. Stanley was employed by King Leopold to dispossess the Congolese of their land. He copied the techniques of the United States and Britain to seize the homeland of the Native Americans.

For 23 years, the area — the size of France, Germany, Norway, Spain and Sweden combined — was the King's personal possession. Leopold's agents pioneered a ruthless forced-labor system for gathering wild rubber: villages that failed to meet the rubber-collection quotas were required to pay the remaining amount in amputated hands. Some estimates say Congo's population fell by 10 million during that time.

An impoverished and brutally dismembered Congolese man who was enslaved in his own nation by King Leopold of Belgium to collect wild rubber that made King Leopold rich.

The colony was handed over to the Belgian state in 1908, but there was no thought of granting Congo independence until the late 1950s, and then it happened very suddenly in 1960.

"All countries prefer to see any conquests they took part in as something noble, whether [it be] manifest destiny, bringing civilization and Christianity to the savages or whatever," says Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold's Ghost, the 1998 best seller that explores Belgium's savage colonial history in Congo.

These Congolese men are holding hands of their dismembered children who couldn't gather enough wild rubber to enrich the King Leopold and his Belgium courtiers.

"For decades, the Belgians who lived in Congo have been a powerful lobby for maintaining a very rosy view of the colonial era — in the Africa Museum outside Brussels, in school textbooks and elsewhere — and for shunning scholars, many of them Belgians, who portray something darker."In some ways, Tintin in the Congo was mild for its time. Hergé's ideas about the colony were entirely in tune with the age, when Africans were considered to be primitives.

Until 1960, Belgian schoolbooks would contain phrases like "The intellectual development of the black child stops very early" and "Negroes are indolent, lazy by nature, lacking in foresight." As odious as it sounds today, Africans were considered eternal children who needed to be groomed for adulthood.

In June, the former colony celebrates 50 years of independence, and Belgium's King Albert II will attend the festivities in Kinshasa. But feelings between the two countries are still raw, with Belgium regularly grumbling about Congo's human-rights record, and Congo accusing the Belgians of paternalism. During a diplomatic spat in 2004,Congolese Information Minister Henri Mova Sakanyi charged the Belgian government with "racism and nostalgia for colonialism," adding, "It's Tintin in the Congo all over again."

But should Tintin pay for the sins of Belgium's past? Hergé himself later expressed remorse over the book. "I was fed on the prejudices of the bourgeois society in which I moved," he said in the 1970s, and he made many changes for the color version of Tintin in the Congo, which was published in 1946. For example, a scene in which Tintin teaches a class of Congolese people about Belgian geography — saying, "Let's talk about your country, Belgium!" — was later changed to a math class.

Nonetheless, the book remains controversial, even outside Belgium. In 2007, Britain's Commission for Racial Equality said the book contains imagery and words of "hideous racial prejudice." The book's British editions carry a foreword explaining that Hergé's depiction reflected the colonial attitudes of the time, and Mbutu Mondondo says he would be satisfied with a similar measure in Belgium.

Moulinsart, the organization that runs Hergé's estate, accepts that the book reflects colonial clichés but warns against moves to censor Tintin. "Obviously, if someone showed Tintin in the Congo to an editor now, it would not get published," says Moulinsart communications director Alain de Kuyssche. "But you can't judge Tintin or Hergé solely by today's standards and attitudes. If you don't take account of the historical context, you would have to put a warning on every book over 50 years old."

10 million HORSESHIT. There were nowhere close to that many people in congo at that time. During the 1800's there were no more than 100 million in the entire continent. Killing even half of the people you claim would render that area completely devoid of human life. Stop peddling your bullshit.

Adam Hochschild, however, devotes a chapter of his book King Leopold's Ghost to the problem of estimating the death toll. He cites several recent lines of investigation, by anthropologist Jan Vansina and others, that examine local sources (police records, religious records, oral traditions, genealogies, personal diaries, and "many others"), which generally agree with the assessment of the 1919 Belgian government commission: roughly half the population perished during the Free State period. Since the first official census by the Belgian authorities in 1924 put the population at about 10 million, that implies a rough estimate of 10 million dead.

@ Anonymous March 13, 2014 at 5:30 AM who postedyeah true but still the africans would stil be primitive s if slavery never happend and it is in human nature to dominate lesser species

You should racist too! Africans are/were not the lesser species. They were human and did not need the white man to deprive them of their basic rights. Why don’t you learn read this book and try to educate yourself before making demeaning comments about another race/ethnicity, etc.

YES! Obviously negrophobic propaganda works, you embody the reason why I post stories like this. Because these images carry forward into the present-day. Negative racist propaganda stereotypes continue into the Modern Era.

Anonymous, for your information, to put a human being into chattle slavery is UNCIVILIZED. At least those people that you claim are "primitive" lived under the natural laws of the universe. And clearly, based on your comment, you know nothing of African history before the Atlantic slave trade.

@ Anonymous March 13, 2014 at 5:30 AM who postedyeah true but still the africans would stil be primitive s if slavery never happend and it is in human nature to dominate lesser species

You should racist too! Africans are/were not the lesser species. They were human and did not need the white man to deprive them of their basic rights. Why don’t you learn read this book and try to educate yourself before making demeaning comments about another race/ethnicity, etc.

Today the state claims a monopoly on enslavement.Slave armies (military conscription) clearly violates the 13th amendment to the US constitution. However, the Supreme Court says, despite the fact that the 13th was enacted shortly after the end of Civil War conscription, when the memory of Draft Riots in several large US cities was fresh, that the 13th amendment does not apply to the state.BobTrent@bobmail.info

Today the USA has a volunteer military. The 13th Amendment does, however, allow for the involuntary servitude of convicted prisoners. Hence, the convict labor lease system, peonage, and chain gangs are as American as apple pie.

Military conscription was enforced BEFORE the 13th Amendment was ratified. Both the Union Army and the Confederate Army drafted their armies.

I wouldn't conflate the Draft Riots with Emancipation. Personally, I think the draft riots fueled the anti-Catholic sentiment and anti-immigrant movements (specifically anti-Irish).

The City of New York made a fortune off of the backs of enslaved labor and child labor. You only need to read the history of the Alabama Cotton Traders called the Lehman Brothers to connect the dots.

Whites in any country, Belgium, England, sSouth Africa, Australia, Germany, here in the US, and elsewhere, the Japanese, numerous African peoples and several other ethnicities, will never be free of their racist past and the guilt it engenders in decent people until they acknowledge the sins of their fathers. Those who seek to forget their own history will repeat their mistakes and produce sub-human spawn like anonymous 2 above.

Or the blacks who enslaved their own people right? why do those sins go unpunished when compared to the institutionalized slavery of the 1800's? Oh yeah it was never reported or taught...that's why no one knows that Africans are just as guilty as whites when enslavement is involved. btw those pyramids you all claim you built...slave labor..Africa is a continent not a country

Clearly you don't know it either. The largest slave trade was NOT the atlantic, but the internal slave trade in Africa, and the slave trade towards the middle-east. The africans themselves were just as guilty as the europeans. The europeans obtained slaves through money because there was a supply, the africans and arabs obtained slaves through violence, and created a supply for themselves and others. The africans also had white European slaves and slaves from india. Something to think about. The total trans-atlantic trade was about 12 million, most of them went to south america and the caribbean islands, only 450 000 went to the US. Almost twice that number was traded eastward within Africa or towards the middle east/ottoman (the turks, who are a mongoloid people, not european) empire. There was 1,5 million white slaves in north Africa. There was an unknown number of European slaves in ottoman slavery. Do not for a second pretend you are any more innocent than anyone else because your skin is darker. "Boo hoo, someone was mean to dark people many years ago". Yeah, you did it yourselves too, to both your own and others. Noone is innocent.

Tintin believe it or not was a hero in our young eyes ,there was nothing wrong with him he existed in a time were theh clock was ticking different .In the beginning of discovering afrika we didnt understand the people there we just saw the wild in to it.i was born in the sixtees my grand parents had som stuff from kongo at home i never ask were they get it .There was a time that i was a shame to come from belgium but why years later i see thrue history mankind in almost every country made incredible shit .We have to watch out it doesnt happen again !!!

I wasn't even aware of Tintin until I started researching Ota Benga, the Congolese man in the Bronx Zoo (New York, USA, 1905--racialized slavery ended in the USA in 1865).

King Leopold's men killed Ota Benga's wife, his children and his entire tribe. He was the sole surviving member of his tribe of Congolese Pygmies. He was purchased by a former Confederate and locked in a monkey cage at the Bronx Zoo.

How do you teach hate?

1. Dehumanize your victims. Turn them in to a subhumans, like monkeys. Hence, Ota Benga in the primate cage with a sign labeled "the missing link".... Or dehumanize them in drawings like those in Tintin. Notice how ALL of the native Congolese are drawn to resemble monkeys.

2. Teach hate to children with cute stories and cartoons. This subject is so ubiquitous that one could do their Ph.D. dissertation on dehumanizing propaganda and children novels. Examples: "Golliwog," "Little Black Sambo," "Ten Little Niggers," "Tintin au Congo," etc.

King Leopold killed 10 million Africans in 15 years, while 12 million Africans were transported to the Americas (North, South, Central and the Caribbean Islands) during the 500 years of the transatlantic slave trade. That just boggles to the mind.

The first half of that literally brought a tear to my eye.. Can't bring myself to read the rest right now..

I was born in 1993 and I do remember the unsettling feeling when I saw the portrayal of the natives in Tin-Tin (at roughly 8 years old.) Even then I could see they had been made to look like Chimpanzees but funnily enough, I have learnt more recently that White Europeans in fact share more DNA with these animals than Africans do.

10 million HORSESHIT. There were nowhere close to that many people in congo at that time. During the 1800's there were no more than 100 million in the entire continent. Killing even half of the people you claim would render that area completely devoid of human life. Stop peddling your bullshit.

Adam Hochschild, however, devotes a chapter of his book King Leopold's Ghost to the problem of estimating the death toll. He cites several recent lines of investigation, by anthropologist Jan Vansina and others, that examine local sources (police records, religious records, oral traditions, genealogies, personal diaries, and "many others"), which generally agree with the assessment of the 1919 Belgian government commission: roughly half the population perished during the Free State period. Since the first official census by the Belgian authorities in 1924 put the population at about 10 million, that implies a rough estimate of 10 million dead.

This was an interesting article. The juxtaposition of photographic documentation and comics from the same era is sickening, and memorable. I admit that I do enjoy Hergé's work as a story teller and illustrator, but today, "Tintin au Congo" has value only as historical evidence of the distorted worldview held by Belgians at the time. Hergé himself regretted having created it, and made an apology and a few changes to the book, albeit 40 years after the fact.

One error I wanted to point out, though, was that the Transatlantic Slave Trade did not take place for five hundred years. Christopher Columbus arrived in what is now the Bahamas in 1492, and adding five hundred to that would place the end of the Transatlantic Slave Trade in 1992, which is obviously incorrect. The first English colony in North America to acquire Africans as slaves was Virginia, in 1619. The Thirteenth Amendment was ratified in 1865. 1865 minus 1619 equals 296 years. Rounding up four years to 300, to arrive at a figure that's a little easier to remember, in one thing, but adding two more centuries is just too much.

I point out this error not to be contrary or to make less of historical atrocities (would it be any less atrocious if the Transatlantic Slave Trade "only" lasted for ten years?), but because factual accuracy is important, especially in an article like this one, in which the intention is to expose truth.

The most obvious defect of "Tintin au Congo" is its complete lack of truth.

Okay, the timeline, naturally is fuzzy. If you take the transatlantic slave trade from 1492, actually started with the Portuguese much earlier (read about Henry The Navigator, 1460) here's a link to the post http://usslave.blogspot.com/2012/03/portuguese-king-henry-navigator.html

Then, when you couple that with the "Scramble for Africa" and the colonization of Africa we're certainly into the 1960's and the 1980's for sure.

When black Americans actually gained their rights of American Citizens was during the Civil Rights Era in the late 1950's to the early part of the 1970's.

Douglas Blackmon's book, "Slavery By Another Name," marks the ending of American slavery in WWII. So, certainly the timeline makes for an interesting debate.

One can certainly make a cogent argument about the current turmoil in the Congo within the framework of Imperialism, Colonization or the enslavement of indigenous people on their own land.

I don't think that Tintin should be banned, but it certainly should be taught within the context of King Leopold, Ota Benga (the Congolese man in the Bronx Zoo), Stanley and Livingstone, Zanzibar and the Islamic spice island slave trade. It's not just a mindlessly sweet children's adventure, but propaganda pure and simple.

Thanks again for your comments, keep reading. History is an argument, not a story.

Perhaps we can disagree on the fuzzy timeline for slavery, and man it is fuzzy. But, there are some facts that should accompany the book, "Tintin au Congo".

Fact 1: The most conservative estimates of the transatlantic slave trade (European nations like Portugal, Spain, Denmark, France, USA, Great Britain, and the Netherlands transferring Africans to the Americas --North, South, Central America and the Caribbean Islands), based on ship manifests from the database at Emory University (35,000 slave voyages) is 12 million people. You can verify this fact at (http://www.slavevoyages.org/tast/index.faces), from 1501-1866--365 years.

Fact 2: King Leopold killed half the population of Congolese (an estimated 13 million people) in 23 years. (source: http://www.yale.edu/gsp/colonial/belgian_congo/index.html)

Just look at those two facts, no conjecture and read "Tintin au Congo," knowing that the Belgium government commissioned these comics. It's hard to draw a "smiley face" around the unmarked tombstones of genocide.

Yes, Prince Henry the Navigator sent expeditions down the west coast of Africa. Somewhat strangely, he never accompanied the expeditions himself. But he did participate in a slave trade, beginning in 1441. He died 19 years later, 32 years before Columbus landed in the Bahamas. Yes, Prince Henry the Navigator's expeditions did sail on the Atlantic, but they did not traverse the ocean; these historical events do involve the enslavement of West African people, but they are distinct from the Transatlantic Slave Trade as we know it today.

As I'm sure you know (but some readers of this blog may not, and so I include these details for their benefit), the African-American Civil Rights Movement is generally considered to have had two distinct periods: the first from 1896 to 1954 (the turning point being Brown v. Board of Education), and the second from 1955 to 1968 (the figurative end being the assassination of MLK, four years after the Civil Rights Act was passed). These events obviously relate to the Transatlantic Slave Trade—they are inarguably descended from it—but they are not actually a part of it. That is to say, just because an event was caused by a prior event (as events usually are), does not make the two events one and the same. They are separate events, with their own beginnings and endings.

Although "Slavery By Another Name" is well-sourced with historical documents, Douglas Blackmon's book is partly theoretical (not necessarily a bad thing) and partly rhetorical (also, not necessarily a bad thing). Its effects may linger, but, in literal terms, the Transatlantic Slave Trade did not occur for 500 years, and has been over for more than 100 years. (It should go without saying that just because it's over, doesn't mean it didn't matter, but I'll say that anyway.) The timeline may not be as fuzzy as it sometimes seems. The Scramble for Africa, Apartheid, and other conflicts and injustices are not the Transatlantic Slave Trade. They are different.

I think these kinds of distinctions matter, and I'll try to explain why: I'm also bothered by comparisons between the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and 9-11. (Stay with me here.) The first event was a proper military of a long-established nation attacking a US military installation in the South Pacific (Hawai'i wasn't a state for another 18 years); the second event, which occurred sixty years later, was a terrorist attack which killed thousands of civilians in a public place. The two events are not related. No matter how many times the US new media have tried to compare them, they are discreet, and distinct from each other. But it's easier—and makes better slogans for T-shirts—to lump them together.

Back to our point, the racial suppression in the early twentieth century that Douglas Blackmon writes about were not literally a part of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. And conflating them (or piggybacking them) with slavery is a kind of exaggeration—one that, in my opinion, does a disservice to the people who suffered through slavery.

History may be an argument, but, for me at least, fine distinctions make a big difference. There's no shame in specificity. It's a valuable tool for the anthropologist, the historian, the blog reader, the truth-seeker.

Unfortunately, the smiley face was "drawn around the unmarked tombstones of genocide" 82 years ago. It was a mistake, and its own creator admitted that.

I agree that "Tintin in the Congo" should not be banned, and that it should be taught within the context of history. And you're correct, it was a kind of propaganda. In fact, Hergé was commissioned to do it by the Belgian government. Incidentally, the depiction of the Congolese is not the only offensive element in that story. The whole book stinks of thoughtlessness; for example, Tintin goes around killing wildlife for no reason. It was the low point of Hergé's career. Fortunately, he was able to redeem himself later in life with thoughtful and humanistic stories like "Tintin in Tibet" (which the Dalai Lama gave a Truth of Light award).

Fortunately, although history is full of atrocities, positive change does happen.

You make some good points, however, I disagree with the Pearl Harbor and 9-11 comparison. Before, during and after slavery involved the same people (albeit different generations) on the same land (Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, etc.)

The Virginia and Maryland slaves were sold down-river, so to speak, to populate the newly formed states of Alabama (1819), Mississippi (1817), Arkansas (1836), Louisiana (1812), Missouri (1821), Florida and Texas, at least that's the story we tell ourselves. In 1808 the US Constitution banned the "direct" importation of Africans; yet, the demographics don't match the law.

Furthermore, many slaves were still alive during the Great Depression, that's where the WPA Slave Narratives come from.

It's easy to conflate the transatlantic slave trade with the scramble for Africa. First, let's take a look at the fugitive slaves that left the USA for Canadian (British) freedom, from the wars in 1812, 1776, and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. They are traceable to Nova Scotia, Canada. You can read Simon Schama's "Rough Crossings" that traces these former US slaves from Canada to the British Colony of Sierra Leone (a slave exporting nation, that the British and the USA had ties with, click on Priscilla's Story to read about Bunce Island). In other words, these stories aren't so easily disentangled.

I think that's what this blog is for, to demonstrate the complexity, complicity and the ubiquitous nature of the slave industrial complex.

The African's come from Ham.Zondervan Bible Dictionary:Ham:1.The youngest son of Noah born probably about 96 years before the Flood; and one of eight persons to live through the Flood. He became the progenitor of the dark races; not the Negroes, but the Egyptians, Ethiopians, Libyans and Canaanites.

Noticed the phrase,"not the Negroes". The question is then who are the Negroes if they are not from Ham? The Negroes are from the line of Noah's son Shem. They are the 12 sons of Jacob known as Israel. They are the true Hebrew Israelites of the Torah/bible.

For more information on the Physical Appearance of the true biblical Israelites please click the link below and watch the video . http://www.yahspeople.com/study-your-heritage.html

Who is Israel today?

The so-called African America a.k.a. Negro The West Indies of Afro descent Jamaicans of Afro descent Haitians of Afro descent Dominicans of Afro descent Puerto Ricans of Afro descent Mexicans of Afro descent Brazilians of Afro descent Cubans of Afro descent And all those that are scattered around the world of Afro decent not of Hamitic bloodline but are true descendants of Jacob (Israel) through the line of Shem, Abraham, and Issac.

Note: African, Colored, Negro, Black, Afro-American, African American…The terms used to refer to Black Americans. Also Afro and Negro is a term used to refer to those that came from the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade and are not of Hamitic bloodline.

Understand not all people that are dark and brown skinned are from the line of Ham. Noah had 3 sons Shem, Japheth, and Ham. Jacob / Israel = The first Israelite, and the progenitor of the Black Hebrews. Jacob is from the line of Shem. The line of Shem is of a dark skinned people and look like Ham in appearance.

ROFLMFAO fuck you with your sinister character. XD XD God you are so fucking ridiculous. The congolese are animals, raping monkey eating animals, they even kill and eat pygmies. Who gives a shit how many died,and I guarantee you it wasn't any 10's of millions because there wasn't even a population of that amount.

If you are so worried about THE SLAVE TRADE then what are you doing to stop the slaving of Sudanese, Mauritanians, and many others at the hands of the Saudi's, Kuwaitis, Egyptians, Chad, etc. ??? Slavery was just illegalized in Mauritania 4 YEARS AGO and nothing has changedNorth Sudanese kidnap an estimated 100,000 Southern Sudanese A YEAR to sell as slaves, that is PROVEN and 2 million have died in the last 20 years.

Also, your shitty EUROPEAN slave trade flags? Where's your Saudi slave flags? They have had a black slave trade since the time of Mohammed (and before) and still run slaves today at slave markets in Mecca.

Over 100 MILLION blacks died for the muslim arab slave trade with a full 90% dying BEFORE they even reached the slave market. At least American slaves 95% survived the voyage across the atlantic and many had property rights, marriage rights, could maintain their own livestock, etc. It wasn't all rape and whippings like you fucking LIARS say, not only that as far as female africans go, they were probably treated 1000X better in the US than by their own males + no female genital mutilation, no polygamy, and in Africa the women do all the work, from the farming to the cooking. They probably actually had LESS work as a fucking slave. I see how women are treated in Africa. Tribesmen who captured female slaves from warring tribes often kept most of the females and sold americans the males. The standard procedure was to MURDER all the males (would that have been better? no slaves, but, just all those males killed?) They said they considered it a MERCY to sell the men instead of kill them. They kept the women because the women were hard workers & generally didn't even try to run away, since life wasn't any different under the capturing tribe.MUSLIMS castrated all their male black slaves since they considered blacks animals would would never control their lust, and they still do think of blacks in that way. Muslims preferred at least 2/3 female slaves because Sex Slavery is allowed under islam so you better believe ALL those women were raped and most of the little boys too.

You make me sick. You hate white people, you blame them for everything, you don't help the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of black slaves living today - you suck shit.

You cant make that charge that for some conspiratorial reason unannounced to me that I am whitewashing history. I don't speak Arabic and it's not a language like French, Spanish, Portuguese, German or even Dutch that I can pick through even though I'm not completely fluent or literate in those languages. I can't even make heads or tails of Arabic, even though we do use Arabic numerals, Arabic calculations, Arabic Algebra, Arabic decimals etc. All that being said, I have not ignored the Trans Saharan or the Indian Ocean Slave Trade.

The number one post of all time on this blog about "US Slaves" is a post about the Indian Ocean Slave Trade in a tiny island called Diego Garcia. Each and every week Diego Garcia never leaves the to 10 most popular posts.

You seem to enjoy visiting this blog. There are literally billions of sites on the internet, yet you like to rant about whatever. I post whatever seems interesting to me, there is no hidden agenda, just whatever piques my curiosity.

Now, if I were to post something on the Sudan, it would be about the plethora of pyramids or what minerals are beneath that soil that is worth more than their human lives and exactly who is sponsoring the ethnic cleansing of Africa.

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You are quite right in saying that the Belgian mentality has been second in racism to Nazi Germany only, but Hergé as person did not intend Tintin au Congo as a racist charge. At that time he was a boy scouts' troop leader and the story told in the album is actually about Belgian boys he knew who fancied themselves as African tribes with animal totems during games. It is a cartoon story where the arch-villains are the diamonds traffickers from Anvers that fooled every tribe including the naive Whites, and unfortunately the story has remained the same upto nowadays.

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Capoeira

African Martial Arts of Brazil

About the Banjo by Tony Thomas

The banjo is a product of Africa. Africans transported to the Caribbean and Latin America were reported playing banjos in the 17th and 18th centuries, before any banjo was reported in the Americas. Africans in the US were the predominant players of this instrument until the 1840s.

Charleston Slave Tags and Slave Badges

Badge laws existed in several Southern cities, urban centers such as Mobile and New Orleans, Savannah and Norfolk; the practice of hiring out slaves was common in both the rural and urban South. But the only city known to have implemented a rigid and formal regulatory system is Charleston.

MANILLA: MONEY OF THE SLAVE TRADE

Manilla. Manillas were brass bracelet-shaped objects used by Europeans in trade with West Africa, from about the 16th century to the 1930s. They were made in Europe, perhaps based on an African original.Once Bristol entered the African trade, manillas were made locally for export to West Africa.

SLAVE CURRENCY: African Slave Trade Beads

In Africa, trade beads were used in West Africa by Europeans who got them from Venice, Holland, and Bohemia. They used millions of beads to trade with Africans for slaves, services, and goods such as palm oil, gold, and ivory. The trade with Africans was so vital that some of the beads were made specifically for Africans.

Slave Trade Currency: Cowry Shells

Long before our era the cowry shell was known as an instrument of payment and a symbol of wealth and power. This monetary usage continued until the 20th century. If we look a bit closer into these shells it is absolutely not astonishing that varieties as the cypraea moneta or cypraea annulus were beloved means of payments and eventually became in some cases huge competitors of metal currencies.

Bunce Island Slave Factory

Cannons with the Royal Crest

Adanggaman

Africans Making Slaves of Africans

Ota Benga The Man in the Bronx Zoo

Ota Benga (1883-1916) was an African Congolese Pygmy, who was put on display in the monkey house at the Bronx Zoo in New York in1906

Railroads and Slave Labor

North America's four major rail networks — Norfolk Southern, CSX, Union Pacific and Canadian National — all own lines that were built and operated with slave labor.

Sculptor Augusta Savage

"Lift every voice and sing" by Augusta Savage: New York World's Fair.

Afro-Uruguay Spirit of Resistance in Candombe

In the streets of Montevideo, Uruguay, Afro-Uruguayans celebrate an often-ignored part of their history - Candombe and resistance.

Tintin: Sinister Racist Propaganda

Tintin has been an inspiration for generations. But his status as a paragon of wholesome adventure is under threat, thanks to a court bid to ban one of his books, Tintin in the Congo, for its racist portrayal of Africans.

W.E.B. DuBois

"It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,--an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder." -- W.E.B. DuBois

Slave Tortures

Portugal Slave Trade

1501-1866 Portugal transported 5,848,265 people from Africa to the Americas.

French Slave Trade

1501-1866 France transported 1,381,404 Africans to America.

Great Britain Slave Trade

1501-1866 The British transported 3,259,440 Africans to the Americas.

Spain Slave Trade

1501-1866 Spain transported 1,061,524 Africans to the Americas

Denmark Slave Trade

1501-1866 Denmark transported 111,041 people from Africa.

United States Slave Trade

1501-1866 The USA transported 305,326 Africans to the Americas.

Netherlands Slave Trade

"To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?" — Marcus Tullius Cicero